Where next on the pre-emptive strike list of failed states? NSW or Nauru?

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By mid-week the search was on. Senior ministers were poring over maps of the South Pacific. They needed to find an example - just one - of a country it would be OK to invade.

After all, the Prime Minister had made a big deal of his willingness, in certain circumstances, to order a pre-emptive strike against another country. But then journalists, in their pesky way, started asking, "Which country would you invade?", and Mr Howard seemed to go to water. While remaining very tough and very strong and very much of opinion that terrorists were bad people, he seemed to agree that an immediate attack on Indonesia, or the Philippines, or Thailand might not be the best idea.

But, if he didn't mean those countries, which countries did he mean? It was a mystery, and a very deep one.

Mr Downer, who loves helping the Prime Minister out on these occasions, thought he knew. And so he went on the ABC's AM program to say that we could - just as a for-instance - invade the Solomon Islands. Not now, of course, but in the past. When it was a failed state.

Of course, the Solomons doesn't have a Muslim training camp, possibly because it doesn't have any Muslims. But if it did, and we found out about it, especially back then, when it was a failed state ... well, an invasion would be in order.

The logic left grown men weeping and mature women chewing the legs off garden furniture. It came down to this: if, in the future, the Solomons has a Muslim training camp, despite its lack of Muslims, we could invade them, as long as we did it in the past, before we found out about the camp.

Even for the ever-competent Australian Army it seemed a tough mission: requiring, at the very least, a talent for time-travel.

Following Downer's appearance, the outcry from our South-East Asian neighbours increased. If Howard doesn't mean us, they asked, and he doesn't mean the Solomons, then who does he intend to invade?

No doubt a group of advisers was assembled to think up a plausible example. "We need a failed state, somewhere in the South Pacific," one departmental officer would whisper to another. "It has to have a large Muslim population, and be antagonistic to Canberra."

It would take some time to calm him down. Under the rule of Dear Leader, NSW was certainly a failed state - just look at the transport and hospitals - but would a pre-emptive strike really help? Ross Cameron was already in trouble in the seat of Parramatta; but the sight of a squadron of RAAF bombers strafing Church Street might offend the locals.

After that, the suggestions would start to flow. Lord Howe Island would be about the right size: we could bomb that, and still be back in time for tea. New Zealand has been asking for it for years - making us look bad by taking all those refugees, plus talking funny. Tasmania is fairly annoying - and a terrible drain on the Treasury.

Yet, in the end, it was Mr Howard himself who solved the problem. He sat in his office and contemplated the map. Last time there was an election, he had the same problem; precisely the same problem. He remembered now: he'd needed an island, somewhere in the South Pacific, an island willing to do anything, provided it was paid off.

The Prime Minister smiled as the idea took form: "Nauru came to my rescue last time; it can do it again."

Sitting in his office, he made his plans. The Australian bombing raid on Nauru would occur on October 7, just a couple of days before the election. As the smoke cleared, a sombre Prime Minister would explain how Nauru was a perfect example of the need for the occasional pre-emptive strike.

It is virtually a failed state, he would tell the people. It had no armed forces to speak of, and yet housed a real threat to the people of Australia. "There is a camp on the island," the Prime Minister would gravely intone, "full of Muslims, and surrounded by barbed wire. I ask the Australian people - why the barbed wire, unless they are trying to keep people out, and keep something secret?"

The Prime Minister's face would firm with resolve. "It's also clear that some of them dislike the current Australian Government, for reasons I don't quite understand. I guess they just don't like our values."

And that - if the Prime Minister thinks of it - will be the story of the shipload of people who helped win not one election, but two, for John Winston Howard.